Digital Research in the Humanities and Arts(DRHA) 2015 - The Composing Pony: Grammatical Evolution for the Composition of Piano Melodies

Abstract:

Evolutionary Computation (EC) uses the principles of Darwinian evolution to solve a given computational problem. During the past few decades such methods have been applied in aesthetic domains such as art and music. We present a compositional tool for creating simple piano melodies with Grammatical Evolution, a grammar based EC algorithm. The system employs a context free grammar to create a variety of musical elements within each melody such as runs, arpeggios, turns and chords without any a priori musical information in regards to key or time signature. The melodies are evolved by allowing them to survive or die out according to their fitness --- a user defined measure of how successful each melody is. This results in the emergence of a tonality in the evolved melody which is in turn used in creating a grammar for an accompanying bass part. In this way two-part compositions are dynamically created with the one tonality. A selection of evolved pieces are presented demonstrating that the method is capable of creating interesting and unique musical compositions. The distinction between the fitness and evaluation of the melodies is discussed.

Evolved musical compositions